Category Archives: Travel Diary

Book Review: Under the Tuscan Sun

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If you’re like me and love to armchair travel, you’ve probably already read Under the Tuscan Sun and quite possibly, you’ve seen the movie starring the glorious Diane Lane. If you’re like me, you’ve wallowed in the thought of coffee on the piazza in Cortona and actually meeting Frances Mayes. And, if you’re really like me, you’ve done all of these things multiple times — like gobs. Since I just finished listening (for about the tenth time) to Frances Mayes reading her own book courtesy of my car stereo, I thought it was time to put my writing where my ears and eyes have been for the last thirteen years since I first discovered Mayes.

Mayes was originally a poet, and it shows up in all of her prose. Her descriptions of her purchase, renovation, and life in an Italian farmhouse are lyrical. One of the story lines that resonates especially well with me involves the going back and forth between San Francisco and Italy, and how each trip to Italy represents a new step in the renovation and renewal process. Since both Ed and Frances Mayes are professors, their rhythms follow the academic calendar, and so do mine. I know what it is like to have a list a mile long, waking up that first blessed morning of “vacation” ready to face the next round of cleaning, gardening, and renovating. As each Italy vignette unfolds I can almost physically feel Mayes relax, enjoy Cortona at Italy’s pace, and then gear up to return to her life in San Francisco. Maybe that’s why I originally loved her style so much.

Image via igougo.com

As Mayes continues her story beyond renovation, the reader is treated to visits to restaurants, cathedrals, and vineyards. That’s my kind of travel and since it’s all written in first person,  I can imagine myself touring Italy — with husband driving, of course! The sequel to Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany, is more of a travel memoir than Tuscan Sun, but continues Mayes’s love affair with Italy, its food, and its slower paced lifestyle.

tuscansun-dvdMayes’s book was made into a Under the Tuscan Sun (Widescreen Edition) movie of the same name and stars Diane Lane. Although it’s not even remotely the same, I love the fantasy that Audrey Wells created using Mayes’s original story. The characters that revolve around Frances (Lane) bring new depth to factual pieces of Mayes’s life, such as divorce, the support/lack of support of friends, and reinventing herself both literally and figuratively. Who cares if they aren’t exactly true? The movie was filmed in Cortona and other locations in Italy and is a visual treat. It’s a movie I can watch again and again.

You can imagine my surprise when I read the reviews of Under the Tuscan Sun on Amazon. Tucked in there among the glowing recommendations are some negative thoughts about Mayes; the best is calling Tuscan Sun “Martha Stewart does Italy.” As a person who used to video tape ALL the Martha Stewart episodes before there were DVRs and online reruns, I’d actually call that high praise. Sadly, that reviewer just doesn’t get who Mayes is as a writer. I think I do.

I’ve gobbled up the rest of Mayes’s books, including Swan, a kind of Gothic mystery set in the South,  and A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveler, another travel memoir that takes the reader beyond Italy. The coffee table books about Italy are beautiful and deserve a check out from the library. I haven’t read her poetry book, but may look for it in the library. In researching this piece, I’ve discovered that there’s a brand new sequel to Tuscan Sun, and I’m going to use my end-of-the-school-year gift cards to buy Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life. Its reviews tell me that I will probably love it, since the types of things that the reviewers don’t like are the ones I liked about her other books. I’ll let you know. I also discovered that she now longer lives in San Francisco, and has gone back to her Southern roots by purchasing a home in North Carolina.  She blogs relatively often at Frances Mayes’s Journal, and the posts reveal a pretty down-to-earth human being.

Finally, a note of caution. Frances Mayes apparently has been happy to ride on the bandwagon of fame and has some spin-off credits under her name. You can buy “At Home in Tuscany” furniture through Drexel Heritage and she and Ed hawk Bramasole olive oil on the internet. You can even buy Bramasole flatware, but I think this product is just capitalizing on the name. It’s pretty, though, if you’re in the market! And, if you’re actually lucky enough to visit Cortona, the city web site gives you explicit directions on how to get to Bramasole.

I leave you with my favorite quote from the movie and another blogger’s summary of its source.

“Terrible ideas…don’t you just love those?” (Movie quote from Under the Tuscan Sun) This was a line in the movie by actress Lindsey Duncan, who played the captivating Katherine in the movie. The statement was made when she first meets Lane’s character, Frances, in Tuscany. Katherine asks Frances if she is going to buy a villa that she is looking at posted on the wall. Frances chuckles about what a terrible idea that would be given her circumstances. At this point, Katherine looks at her mischievously and says this wonderful line, as if daring Frances to go ahead and buy it.

Terrible ideas sometimes turn out to be our best ones. I think that for Frances Mayes, buying this rundown house was probably a terrible idea, but it led to my love affair with Mayes’s writing and her beloved Cortona, Italy. I thank her for having a crazy idea and following through with it.

This post is just full of Amazon links. Feel free to purchase through my Amazon Associates account; it may help pay for my long-awaited trip to Italy!

On the Road: False Advertising and a Pot of Gold

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As my husband and I ease on down the road toward retirement, we think about where we might like to plant ourselves. Since I have always wanted to live near a lake or an ocean we have been looking at places along the Great Lakes. I check real estate listings, wondering what we can afford with a view of the water. Well, in one case of false advertising, my question has been answered.


On the first day of our vacation, we were in northern Ohio and found ourselves with some extra time in our traveling schedule. We decided to take a quick gander at one of the places we had been looking at online. Chesapeake Lofts in Sandusky, Ohio, looks very appealing on the Internet. The condominiums are in a renovated factory building on a pier extending into the Lake Erie waterfront, and overlook Kelley’s Island. You can see Cedar Point in the distance; it’s a great location. Unfortunately, the reality doesn’t live up to the artist’s rendition.

I probably should have known (husband says that he warned me) that the neighborhood was at best a gentrifying area. The condos are rented out and apparently have a low owner occupancy rate. The comments online tell a story of a blighted neighborhood, transient occupancy, and dissatisfied owners. Now that I’ve seen it for myself, I’m not surprised.

The first thing we encountered as we walked along the sidewalk adjoining the condo development was a sign announcing that the adjacent canal was the site of the storm drain overflow and that the canal was unsafe for swimming, water skiing, and fishing due to possibility of raw sewage dumping into the canal.

Someone really should have told the fish.

As we continued our walk down the path, getting closer and closer to the lake, we encountered these cute little lights.

Just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, those are dead bugs that haven’t been cleaned up. Thousands of them. I know that the squeamish among you are now shrieking over the travesty of someone actually buying into this condo complex. What kind of a management company allows a mess like this to stay on the sidewalk for more than a few hours? Yuck, yuck, and triple yuck.

As we walked back toward the car, our final view of the neighborhood was the abandoned buildings lining the street that the Chesapeake Lofts web site refers to as the“Paper District.” Really?

As with any vacation, we ran a risk and depending on your “adventure quotient,” you could say that our risk paid off. We know for a fact that it will be a cold day in you-know-where before we retire to the Chesapeake Lofts, so we can cross that one off of our very long list of possibilities. It’s similar to a college search; the more colleges a student looks at, the more likely he or she is to pick the one that’s right.

And, as with some sad stories, there was a pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow. We ended our day’s drive with a visit to my cousin’s home near Pittsburgh. Theirs is a magic circle of love and faith centered around this beautiful lake.

After a challenging day of driving, we were happy to call their guest room home for the night. Hopefully we’ll find a lake, too, where we can start a charmed  life story in our retirement.

Book Review: Boleyn – Tudor Vampire

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Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love England and usually hoover up books about the Tudor era.

I ran across this book review of a book about Anne Boleyn at At Home with a Good Book and a Cat, and I just had to share. What is it about vampires that gets people’s creative juices flowing?

Nevertheless, if you are looking for a regular book review site, I encourage you to check out misfitandmom at At Home with a Good Book and a Cat.

All Roads Lead to American Idol

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The funniest thing happened tonight. I got a local public service phone call telling me that many area roads will be closed on Friday night due to the party being held at Arlington Park Racetrack for Lee Dewyze. I guess I had better get home and do my laundry instead of going over to my friend’s bar across the street from the racetrack where there will also be a party.

Although I think he’s an interesting guy (and a darn sight better than Casey what’s-his-name with the bleating sheep vibrato), I’m still solidly in the Crystal Bowersox camp.

When I looked up her bio, I found that she went to Oak Harbor High School, where my friend Ken teaches music. She transferred to the Toledo School for the Arts, which doesn’t surprise me. She also moved to Chicago and performed locally in my old Lakeview neighborhood.

It’s a tough choice: Crystal from Ohio or Lee from Mount Prospect? Only time will tell, but it ain’t gonna be Casey.

I’m Baaaaaa – ck

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As I prepared for my recent trip to England for a wedding, I became unsure how much to disclose on the internet. Most of the people who consistently read my blog already knew that I was going, but I had some (perhaps) irrational fear of stranger danger while I was gone. I suppose it’s possible that someone could figure out where I live and break in, not that there’s much beyond electronics to steal. Anyway, I’m home again, my house was fine, and I’m full of new stories to tell. I appreciate that you hung in there with me while I was on hiatus from blogging.

When I came back through U.S. customs, I struggled with one of the questions on the customs declaration card — something about having been up close and personal with any livestock or a farm. Although I didn’t ride any horses and didn’t actually touch any sheep, they were everywhere. Lambies here, lambies there, everywhere a lambie. Even the wedding venue had sheep up close to the fence that separated Kingscote Barn from the actual working farm. From what I understand, the intent is to keep people from bringing in animal-borne disease, so I said I hadn’t been near any farm animals. It’s just another one of those nuances of the English language that people who write questionnaires don’t seem to understand. You have to be exact about what you are asking and why you are asking it, or you won’t get the response that you need. But my rant about precise language can be saved for another day. You’re here to find out about the lambs.

That’s another thing. Silence of the lambs. I didn’t notice any silence. The lambs baaa — ed all day and much of the night. I’ve never lived near where there are actual sheep and cows in close proximity and within hearing distance. For a time while growing up, we did have goats that bleated and a rooster that crowed, but they didn’t seem so omnipresent as these sheep were. Perhaps I’ve been away from the countryside too long and just don’t remember the sounds of rural Ohio.

The setting for the wedding in a restored 17th Century Cotswold barn was extraordinarily beautiful, despite the sounds of the sheep, and both the bride and groom looked stunning.

Even though this was one big pain in my patootie to go to this wedding in the Cotswolds while school was in session (think volcano erupting and union contracts limiting the amount of days I can be gone from school), it was worth every minute and every dollar. If you ever get a chance to attend a country wedding in England, JUST GO. You won’t regret it.

Linky Love: Renting Italian Villas

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This isn’t my year to do Italy, but I’m already thinking about next summer. My blogging friend Linda Dini Jenkins has written a wonderful post about renting villas in Italy for your next vacation.

Last summer we traveled with our friends Mark and Kathy in England and are looking forward to traveling with them again. For Christmas, they gave us Linda’s book, Up at the Villa: Travels with My Husband. For me, travel memoirs are like peanut M & Ms; I just can’t put them down until I’m all finished. Linda’s lovely book was no exception and I devoured it in one sitting. Ever since I saw Enchanted April for the first time, I have always wanted to rent a villa in Italy with friends. Apparently I’m not the only one, as Linda’s interview with Mario Scalzi proves.

If you are interested in traveling in Italy or just reading about it from your arm chair, I encourage you to link up with Linda. She’s a great writer with practical travel advice. Viva the Villa Experience!

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links, but I wouldn’t tell you to buy or read something if I didn’t believe in it. I’m just keeping it real.

Food for Thought

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The closer we get to our trip to Paris, the more real it gets. I am beginning to collect names of restaurants along with my “don’t miss” tourist destinations. Given that I love history, it would be really fun to eat in a restaurant like Ledoyen, which was built in 1848 and is considered one of the best restaurants in Paris.

I follow many bloggers who write about France, but I continue to go back to David Lebovitz: Living the Sweet Life in Paris for information and inspiration. This week he wrote a post about how to get a fabulous French meal for under 100 Euros. In U.S. dollars, that’s about $135 per person. It seems like a lot of money, but if you are going to France, aren’t you going to treat yourself at least once to a life-changing meal? And, since that $135 includes tax and service, you’re getting a lot closer to what you might spend in a fine dining restaurant in any town in America. We don’t do it every day, but it’s Paris, for goodness sake.

I doubt very much that I’ll ever get another chance to eat at Le Jules Verne, the fancy restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, but I just might on this trip. And maybe I’ll eat this. (I’m sorry; I just couldn’t resist.)

Or this, at Restaurant Taillevant.

Image via alifewortheating.com

For more beautiful pictures of the food and interesting commentary, I encourage you to read David’s Lebovitz’s blog, Living the Sweet Life in Paris.  I’m going to go crank up the DVD player and watch Julie and Julia again to watch the divine Ms. C cook and eat her way through France. Bon appetit!

Losing It: Week 7

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I’m going out on a limb here and say that I don’t think most of us lost much weight this week. I’m not ashamed of my week, however. It was one of the best food weeks of my life. And, to prove my point about how difficult it is for me to lose weight, I didn’t lose or gain any weight. I’m exactly the same today as I was last Friday, even after a week of celebrating. Perhaps I celebrated more carefully because I’m more aware of what I put in my mouth because I know I’m going to be held publicly accountable.

Let’s get real. I enjoyed every minute of it, and I didn’t think much about the consequences.

First of all, we went to a friend’s 60th birthday party on Saturday night. She is from England originally,  so her daughter ordered her favorite Indian food from a local restaurant, Himalayan. It’s hard to find a pretty photo of lamb curry because it just kind of looks like red stew, but here’s a recipe for it if you want to try it at home. For those not quite as adventurous in your cooking, go to Trader Joe’s, buy a bottle of curry sauce and put it in with the lamb.

We had a lot of fun at the party, what with the sixties costumes and the love beads and the dancing — it was really hard to imagine that we would be getting up at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning to go to church. But we did; we had inspirational music,  my husband’s brass ensemble played well, and then it was time for another restaurant.

You would never know from the outside that the food at Retro Bistro is so amazing. It’s in a strip mall in a Chicago suburb.

We had the special prix fixe Easter menu which included lamb chops. I have had other items on their regular menu; the crab and shrimp cakes are to die for. This time, instead of dessert, I topped my Easter meal off with escargot in a puff pastry hat. This photo isn’t exactly what I had at the restaurant; Retro Bistro had dishes with little depressions in them for the escargot to lay in the lovely butter and garlic. I got this picture from a blogger that I ran across and will follow from now on. Great recipes! Thanks, Thibeault’s Table.

After two days of eating and having too much fun, I came back to the house, camped out in my chair, and watched three movies on cable! It was a luxury knowing that I did not have to go to work on Easter Monday.

On Monday night, we had Book Club where were served Italian beef and a chopped salad from Buono (the restaurant formerly known as Buono Beef). It was also very good and hit the spot after all the rich food of the last two days. I found this photo of a classic Chicago Italian beef sandwich at Amazing Ribs.com, another blogger who reviewed various Chicago purveyors of Italian beef. Buono didn’t win his taste testing, but it sure was good when we ate it Monday night!

We discussed Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen, which I will review on another post. Good food, good conversation, good friends. What else do you need in life?

And then, unbelievably, we went out AGAIN (and on a school night) on Wednesday night. I drove into Chicago at rush hour in the rain (90 minutes) and met up with my sister-in-law who is in for a convention. We had a family dinner with our daughter and other friends from Washington state and Washington, D.C. at Carnavale.

I have been wanting to go to this restaurant, which specializes in Nuevo Latino cuisine, for quite a while, but was afraid we would be clearly suburbanites coming into the big, bad city for a thrill and treated poorly.  That was not the case at all; we had fabulous service and the atmosphere was very welcoming for a mixed group of ages.

We had a cheese flight, with five good size cheese servings, and a ceviche flight of five seafood offerings. They were both outstanding and unique.

Then we shared a lamb chop on polenta special, Mama Mendez’ Arroz Con Mariscos with Sofrito rice, shrimp, mussels, clams, squid, chorizo, peas, chicken, lobster broth, and the daily fish special. All were fabulous! Yelp’s reviews of this restaurant are not all positive, but our experience was excellent.

I didn’t title this  “Things I Love” originally, but after reading this hymn to restaurants, the post probably doesn’t belong in the “Losing It” category either. If you’re in Chicago, try these places out. You won’t be disappointed.

Things I Love: Chicago Revisited

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Last Wednesday was my Chicago staycation day. I only had time this Spring Break week to carve out one day for sightseeing, but I was determined to get downtown to see those Impressionist paintings. So here, in no specific order, are the things I loved.

1. The Chicago Art Institute. For eighteen dollars, I saw genius revealed.

2. Livestrong.com. I mapped how far it is to walk from the Olgivie Transportation Center to the Art Institute and back. According to Livestrong, it is 1.77 miles and instead of taking a bus or a taxi, I walked it. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. Yeah, me!

3. My daughter. I love the woman she has grown up to be. And I love the restaurants she chooses. We had great Japanese food and good conversation.

4. Metra. I drove my car to a parking garage that is two short blocks from the train station. I took a comfortable commuter train to the city center, avoiding stressing myself out on the expressway. I read my Paris travel guide and arrived rested and ready to sight-see. On the way home, I stopped at the new French Market at the train station and picked up some gorgeous apples to take home with me. I love public transportation.

Elvis Presley once said that to achieve happiness, you need someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. In Chicago, I have all of those things.

Things I Love: Re-Entry

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This week is more than just a week off from school. It’s also Holy Week, and I’m going to use the opportunity of having a little free time to write about the blessings of my life in a series called Things I Love. Today, we’re going to talk about my Home Sweet Home, Chicago.

Why re-entry?

Although the term re-entry is usually used when talking about the space program, it seems appropriate to use it to talk about what it feels like to return to Chicago after a weekend away.

We love visiting family and friends in Indiana and Ohio (and points beyond), but really, there’s no place like our Chicagoland home. Do you remember when Dorothy saw the Emerald City? That sense of wonderment, of excitement, of feeling my pulse speed up never fails to fill my soul as we make the first sighting of the lights of the Chicago skyline.

Frank L. Baum is said to have been influenced by the 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago when creating Oz. Of course, when Baum imagined Oz/Chicago in his book, he was envisioning the Beaux Arts style of architecture that was prevalent at the Columbian Exposition. We know this style through the Museum of Science and Industry and the Chicago Art Institute, the two remaining buildings from the Exposition. He wasn’t thinking of high-rise skyscrapers.

Recently we’ve spent a lot of time on U.S. Route 30 between Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Chicago. Coming home, every time we hit that point in northwest Indiana where you can see the Willis (Sears) Tower and the Chicago skyline, there’s a change in the energy in the car.

All of a sudden, we’re checking Google maps on my phone to see if there are traffic problems anywhere.  We’re being passed by speeding semis and drivers who must have learned to drive in a video game. They are whizzing in and out of lanes going 80 miles an hour in 55 mile an hour traffic. We’re scanning the road to see if there’s any debris that is going to fly up and hit our windshield. No more poking along on a two lane highway watching the corn grow. We’re back in the game.

Part of why we love Chicago is the wide variety of activities in which we participate. Just this weekend, we missed the Mt. Prospect Community Band Concert. Several of our friends play in this band and we were sorry to not be able to support them, but they will have other concerts. They are a year-round organization that keeps very busy. And they are just one of the many community bands in our immediate geographical area. We are surrounded by folks like us who still regularly play their band instruments as adults, and it keeps us challenged as musicians.

We also missed Palm Sunday at our church, Trinity United Methodist Church in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. We attend a welcoming and inclusive church with many activities and ministries. As much as I enjoy going to church with my family in Troy, it’s just not the same.We are blessed with staff and church members who are both visionary and willing to explore new ways to worship. Here we are for Big Band Sunday — we played most of the service music in big band swing style using traditional hymn tunes rearranged by husband NRB.

There’s a lot more to say about the blessings in my life. I’ll save it for another day when the sun isn’t shining and I’m not eager to clean up my office space. In fact, those people sitting in the pews in the Big Band Sunday photo are the topic for another day of Things I Love. Talk to you soon!

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